United Edges: State of the Edge merges with Linux Foundation's LF Edge

State of the Edge merges with the Linux Foundation's LF Edge to provide unified edge computing thought leadership. (Pixabay)

LF Edge, an umbrella organization that's part of the Linux Foundation, announced on Wednesday that it acquired the assets of State of the Edge.

LF Edge already had several elements that were aligned with State of the Edge, including Open Edge Glossary of Edge Computing and Edge Computing Landscape, as working groups, but now it has added the research arm of State of the Edge. All three of those elements are now under the State of the Edge brand within LF Edge.

Founded in 2017 by Vapor IO, Packet by Equinix, Edge Gravity by Ericsson, Arm, and Rafay Systems, the State of the Edge organization has published three major edge research reports, all offered free- of- charge under a creative commons license: the first 2018 State of the Edgereport, the 2019 Data at the Edge report and, most recently, the 2020 State of the Edge report. The organization’s founding co-chairs, Matthew Trifiro, CMO of Vapor IO, and Jacob Smith, vice president of bare metal strategy and marketing of Equinix, will continue as co-chairs of State of the Edge.

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"If you look at the total assets that State of the Edge had, it had a report, which is essentially research, then it had a glossary, and then it had a landscape," said The Linux Foundation's Arpit Joshipura, general manager, networking, edge and IoT. "What we did not have moved over to LF Edge was really the research portion of it.

"So we transferred the all of the assets such as the website, research reports and the funding that goes with it. Now we will start the neutral governance under State of the Edge."

Using the open governance model, LF Edge will continue to advance State of the Edge under the project's original mission, which has been to speed up edge computing by developing free, shareable research that can be used by everyone.

The State of Edge will publish its 2021 report in the fourth quarter of this year after publishing the 2020 report in last year's fourth quarter.

Using its Open Glossary of Edge Computing, LF Edge will continue work to standardize the edge language and definitions across its six projects including: Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, EVE, Fledge and Home Edge.

The State of the Edge roadmap for this year also includes shipping the first version of the LF Edge Interactive Landscape and the third version of the Open Glossary.

"Device edge and infrastructure edge have been widely welcomed as a simplified terminology," Joshipura said. "But then there are other areas, like APIs, that need to be defined even within that. In terms of standardizing the terminology that work will continue as part of the State of the Edge."

Two years ago, the Linux Foundation launched LF Edge to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud or operating systems. LF Edge was designed to provide frameworks for the various edges, which include IoT edge, telco edge, cloud edge, and the enterprise edge.